Chapter Eleven
Harold spent three days after the kink lesson trying to convince himself he wasn't attracted to Jack.
It didn't work. His body was ahead of his brain on that one, and it had been for a while.
The moment his hands had closed the cuff around Jack's wrist, the warm skin under his fingers, the delicate bones of the joint, the stillness of Jack's body as he waited to be restrained, Harold's pulse had kicked and his mouth had gone dry and every Dom instinct he possessed had lit up like a switchboard.
He'd wanted to close the other cuff. He'd wanted to position Jack's body with his own hands.
He'd wanted to hear what sounds Jack would make if he felt safe enough to make them.
Then Jack had shut down and Harold had wanted to put his fist through the wall instead.
He was driving home from a shift, windows down, the desert air warm and dry against his face.
Las Vegas at two in the morning was neon and emptiness, the Strip a distant glow to the north, the warehouse district behind him already fading in his mirrors.
He drove the long way because the long way took him past the dolphin pool facility, the one with the painted warehouse wall, and he'd started doing that without admitting to himself why.
Jack went there during the day. Harold went there at night when it was closed, slowing the truck as he passed, letting his window down to catch whatever scent lingered in the parking lot.
Nothing that night. The lot was empty. The warehouse was dark. Jack should be at the shiver house, asleep, or enduring what had become normalized for him. Was he safe? Was he in pain? Harold didn't know and the not knowing was eating him alive.
He pulled into his apartment complex and sat in the truck with the engine off.
His apartment was on the second floor, a one-bedroom that he'd furnished with the essentials and hadn't decorated because decorating felt permanent and he'd never quite committed to Las Vegas as a permanent thing, even after years of being there.
He went upstairs, drank a glass of water, sat on the couch even though he was exhausted after working his two jobs.
The apartment smelled like him. Loam, warmth, and the faded remnants of the coffee he'd made that morning.
Clean. Familiar. Nothing like the deep ocean water that had taken up permanent residence in his head.
He wanted Jack. That was the problem laid bare without dressing it up.
He wanted the shark who went still when he touched him and who didn't know what it felt like to be wanted instead of used.
He wanted the man who sat on concrete steps at three in the morning and said I don't know who I am outside the shiver with a voice so empty it sounded like a well with no bottom.
He wanted the gray eyes, the dry humor, and the lean body in those ridiculous shorts, and the way Jack's hands moved when he was cleaning, precise and focused, the service instinct that Lady Leo had named and Harold couldn't stop watching.
He hated himself for it. Not the wanting itself but the context of it.
Jack had participated in kidnapping Amani.
He'd tied the rope. He'd driven the van.
He'd known what the crane would do, and he'd delivered Amani anyway.
Yes, Jack was also a victim, yes, his life in the shiver had been a sustained assault that he'd only recently begun to name, but none of that erased what he'd done.
Being hurt didn't give anyone permission to hurt other people.
Harold had arrested enough abusers who'd been abused themselves to know that the cycle didn't excuse the actions.
And there Harold was, developing feelings for one of them.
While Amani was still wearing the hoodie.
While Nero was still positioning himself as a shield between his partner and the shark.
While the person Jack had helped break was working behind the same bar Jack cleaned tables in, processing the same trauma Jack had confessed to being part of.
Harold dropped his head against the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling.
He picked up his phone and texted Nero.
You awake?
The reply came in under a minute. Always. What's wrong.
Nothing's wrong. I need to talk to you about something.
Come to the club. I'm reviewing footage.
He could have protested. He could have called him instead.
But talking face to face felt like the right call.
Harold put his shoes back on, drove back to KK, and let himself in through the staff entrance.
The club was closed and dark. He took the stairs instead of the elevator because the elevator felt too enclosed at that moment and the stairwell smelled like concrete and cleaning chemicals, which helped.
No one ever took the stairs unless they were part of the staff.
Nero was in the security office, the converted closet that smelled permanently of industrial cleaner.
He was leaned back in the desk chair with his feet up, the monitor cycling through camera views of empty rooms. He'd changed out of his shift clothes into a black t-shirt and jeans.
He looked relaxed in a way he rarely did during business hours.
His dark gaze found Harold in the doorway and stayed there.
"You drove home and came back," Nero said. "I can smell the highway on you."
Harold sat on the edge of the desk, the only other surface in the room that could support a person's weight.
The closet was barely big enough for the chair and the desk and the monitor.
Two grown men made it feel like a submarine.
"I need to tell you something and I need you to not react until I'm done. "
Nero took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. Professional mode. The shift was immediate, the way it had always been with Nero, one second he was your friend and the next he was your partner and the distinction mattered. "Go."
Harold looked at the monitor instead of at Nero because what he was about to say was hard enough without watching his best friend's face while he said it.
Camera four showed the empty bar. Camera six showed the hallway by the room where Jack had thrown a punch at Harold and Harold had pinned him to the floor.
Camera eight showed the private room where, three days ago, Harold had cuffed Jack's wrist and watched the man disappear behind his own eyes.
"I'm developing feelings for Jack."
Nero was quiet. Harold kept his eyes on the monitor. Camera three, the main floor. Tables clean, chairs pushed in. Jack's work. Even the camera could see how thorough it was.
"How long?" Nero asked.
"I don't know. A while. I've been telling myself it was professional concern, protective instinct.
Cop stuff. But it's not. Or it started that way and turned into something else.
" Harold rubbed the back of his neck. "The night I pinned him and he went limp, I went home and couldn't sleep for two days.
Not because of what happened. Because of how badly I wanted to be the person who taught him that it doesn't have to be like that. "
"That's a Dom response."
"I know."
"Is it just a Dom response?"
Harold finally looked at him. "No. It's everything.
I like the way he counts cleaning bottles.
I like that he snaps at me when I'm getting too close to making him feel something.
I like that he picks up Amani's bar towel when it falls and puts it exactly where Amani can reach it without getting too close.
I drove past the dolphin pool on my way home tonight because I wanted to smell whether he'd been there today.
" He stopped himself. This was more than he'd planned to say and Nero's face was unreadable, which was Nero's face when he was processing fast and didn't want to show it.
"I know who he is. I know what he did. I'm telling you because you're the person who gets to be angry about it.
You and Amani, Bethany, and Lady Leo. I'm not going into this blindly.
I know what possibly falling for him means. "
Nero was quiet for a long time. On the monitor, camera two showed the elevator doors, closed and still.
"You understand what this means for Amani," Nero said.
"Yes."
"He’s in recovery. Every day he comes down those stairs and works behind that bar with one of his kidnappers in the room is a day he's choosing to face it.
He's getting stronger. He's pushing his sleeves up.
He laughed at one of Reza's jokes last week and it was real, not performance.
" Nero's voice was steady, controlled, precise.
The voice he used in interrogation rooms when the stakes were highest and the margin for error was smallest. "If you get involved with Jack and it goes wrong, or if Amani sees it and it sets him back to where he's hiding again and afraid of everything again, I will end you.
That's not a threat from your friend. That's a statement of fact from the man whose partner was kidnapped and brutalized by a man I'm not sure should still be breathing. "
Harold held his gaze. "I know."
"I will choose Amani over you. Every time. Without hesitation."
"You should."
Nero held the stare for another beat, then the interrogation mode softened. Not all the way, but enough that Harold could see his friend underneath the protector. "I don't think that's what's happening here."
Harold let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Jack is not the same person who got in that van," Nero said.
He turned back to the monitor, watching the empty rooms cycle past. "I've been watching him since he came here.
I watch everyone. It's what I do. And what I see is someone whose entire framework for understanding contact is built on violence and coercion, and who is slowly, painfully realizing that the framework is wrong.
He didn't come to that realization on his own. You pushed him there."
"I named what was happening to him. That's not the same as pushing."
"It is when no one's ever named it before." Nero looked at him. "He acts like someone who's been trained not to have boundaries. I said that his first night. You remember."
Harold remembered. The words had been sitting in his chest since then.
"A person like that doesn't develop boundaries by being left alone.
They develop them because someone demonstrates what a boundary looks like.
You've been doing that. Every night, every conversation, every time you ask before you touch and stop when he shuts down.
You're modeling something he's never seen.
" Nero's mouth thinned. "Whether you meant to or not, you've become the most important person in his life. Act accordingly."
Harold looked at the floor. The industrial tile was scuffed, ground down by years of boots and heels and the occasional paw print from shifters who forgot to change back before walking through the office. "I don't know how to do this without hurting someone."
"You might not be able to." Nero stood up and stretched, the ferret's lean body uncoiling from the chair.
"Amani is going to have a reaction. I don't know what it will look like and I'm not going to pretend it will be simple.
But I also know my partner, and Amani has more capacity for complexity than most people give him credit for.
He chose to have Jack here. He chose the timeline.
He's not fragile. He's recovering, and recovery doesn't mean he gets to control everything that happens around him. "
"That sounds like you've thought about this."
"I've been thinking about it since your second week on the floor when you stopped circulating and started planting yourself next to the shark like a bloodhound who'd found a scent trail." Nero gave him a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation. "You were not subtle, Harold."
Harold almost smiled. Almost. "What do I do?"
"You do what you've been doing. You show up. You're honest. You don't push faster than Jack can handle. And you talk to Amani before anything becomes visible, because he deserves to hear it from you and not figure it out from watching the cameras."
"Lady Leo already knows."
"Lady Leo knew before you did. That woman misses nothing." Nero walked to the door of the closet, then stopped and turned back. "Harold."
"Yeah?"
"If you do this right, it could be good for both of them.
Jack and Amani. If Jack finds something real, something healthy, it changes the shape of what Amani's forgiveness looks like.
It gives Amani evidence that the person who hurt him is becoming someone different.
That matters. If he can see Jack as more than what he was in that van, and he's trying so hard to get there right now, then he can start to process beyond what happened to him. "
Harold sat on the edge of the desk after Nero left.
The monitor cycled through its views. Bar, hallway, private rooms, main floor, elevator.
The club was empty and still and it smelled like cleaning solution and old leather and, faintly, under everything, deep ocean water.
The scent was days old. It shouldn't have been detectable.
But Harold's nose didn't care about should.
It found what it was looking for, always had, and what it was looking for right now was a shark who sat on steps at three in the morning and expected no one to care about him after he left.
He turned off the monitor and went home.